RANNOCH SCHOOL FORMER PUPILS DATA
When the school ran into trouble and was faced with closure the school board said that the former
pupils data was in a muddle and virtually unusable. This was a great pity as a strong former pupils
support would have been a great help.
In order to explain what happened with this data it is necessary to explain about how the school
company was structured.SCHOOL CONSTITUTION
The school was set up as a Company Limited by Guarantee and remained that way until closure.
It was run by a board of governors.
They appointed staff, managed money etc etc and had much the same responsibilities as company
directors.
There were also members of the company. They had a function a bit analogous to shareholders,
but there was no shareholding.
Any former pupil or member of staff could apply to become a member and this had to be approved by
the board. They could not refuse membership except in very special circumstances, such as
criminal records etc. Members meetings were held and they appointed the governors, who themselves
had to be members.
The governors could also confer membership on people other than former staff and pupils if they
considered them to be useful to the school.
This extremely important part of the constitution was never widely published and I was not aware of it
until John Fleming started to spread the word when the school was running into trouble. A strong
membership of former pupils and staff should have been a huge influence throughout the life of the
school and could have decided the way it was run. As it was the membership decayed to only about 30,
many aged or far away and unable to participate. Thus the board was made up of the same few
members circulating round.
When I found out about membership I applied and was accepted and went to the annual members meeting.THE DATA
Tony Walker, one of the directors, at a members meeting shortly before the school closed reiterated
that the former pupils data was in a muddle but added that someone was working on it. I offered my help
to try to sort it out and Tony said that would be welcome and I should phone the school and arrange it.
A few days later I rang and spoke to Dr Perdita Hope who was looking into the data. She sent me two
floppy discs containing an Excel spreadsheet on each.
This was how the former pupils data came into my hands as a member of Rannoch School.
Keith Mackay posted an outline about the creation and work of the Rannoch Association Trust of which
I am a Trustee. It was formed to look after what was left after the school had closed.
As part of this were documents from the school that were passed on by the receiver. The former pupils
data was not among this. It was very fortunate that Perdita sent me the data because otherwise there
would have been nothing. The data is now held by the Rannoch Association Trust.
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE DATA
The data was indeed a shambles. There were two database spreadsheets, no reason given as to why
two. The layout of each was different and the data held in each also differed.It took a lot of work to
massage this lot into a single coherent Excel spreadsheet. There is a total of about 3000 names.
However there was no reference to the old Rannoch Association / RSOBA. A lot of the data was
ancient, in many cases the addresses were those of parents at the time their children were pupils.
There are many people missing, I was able to note several that I knew well from my era at the school.
I've found a few since such as Renwick Hodgson and Andrew Fellowes, but altogether there must be
many more. I also turned up what became of Tony Rollason and Jeremy Sinclair but was not able to
contact them. I would love to know what became of DJR 'Ricky' Kennedy who I knew after Rannoch in
Dundee when he was at the Art College.
When we were planning the reunion in Edinburgh in 2006 we emailed everyone for whom we had an
email address. We sent a letter to all the postal addresses that could possibly be valid, about 1400
altogether. This was a big job and enabled us to identify quite a lot of dead material. We had a lot of
bounced email addresses and a lot of 'return to sender' letters.
We now have about 320 people from whom we have had a response, about 1100 with no response,
1200 for whom we have no contact data and 600 overseas addresses that we didn't try to send surfacemail to.
The data was used again to contact people for the reunions of 2007, 8 and 9. The response gradually
diminished each year. We saw a dropping off of interest with time, with 100 at the 2006 reunion which
had dropped to about 50 by 2009. There does seem to be a core of people who do respond. However
virtually no-one seemed interested in assisting in getting more activity going.
It was a breath of fresh air when Alan Beaton organised the Rannoch Gathering in Pitlochry in
November 2013 and I was very pleased to hear it was a success. It would be great if we could build on
this to get things Rannoch moving.

Jim Holyoake.

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A brief history
from Jim Holyoake

THE RANNOCH ASSOCIATION 1959-1999 Formerly the Rannoch School Old Boys Association (RSOBA)
There has been some discussion among former Rannoch pupils about whatbecame of the ROSBA, later the Rannoch Association. Some of what has been said is wrong or misleading and as I have beeninvestigating this since before the school closed I am well qualified toexplain as far as I can what happened. I've spent a lot of time and effort trying to find out about theAssociation and have managed to gather a certain amount of information.THE INITIAL ASSOCIATION The original Old Boys Association was formed by David Haddow and JohnDunthorne soon after the founding of the school, possibly when they leftand identified a need to keep old boys in touch. In the first instance only life membership was offered. In hindsightthis caused some problems. The life membership was I believe billed to parents of school leaversand many did not take up the offer. My mother didn't, and I never heardanything about it and knew nothing of RSOBSA. I suspect this happened to a lot of people. It was only in 1997 that Iwondered if there was any such organisation and wrote to the school andenquired. I then took out life membership very belatedly. Having only life membership had an unfortunate side-effect. There was noneed for people to keep in touch annually to maintain their membership andhence changes of address and circumstances were not reported. Themembership data thus slowly decayed. At some time an annual membership was introduced, I don't know when thishappened nor how many took it up.THE NEXT PHASE After some years, during the time of Mr Barrett's headship, the schooltook over the administration of the Association. I don't know why thishappened, maybe there was a funding problem. It's a pity that I couldn'tget to the recent Pitlochry gathering as both John and David were there andmight have been able to shed light on this. They both resigned when thishappened. Although there was a committee I rather think they didn't have agreat deal to do as the school organised former pupils events each year. Eventually I feel that the Association data became part of the mailinglist for the School Magazine which went to many other people such asparents and prospective parents. As I wasn't a member during this time I of course received nothing fromthe school. Maybe others know more about this and I would be interested tohear from you.THE FINAL PHASE I went to a former pupils gathering at the school in either 1997. At thatmeeting the head, Dr Halliday, said that he found former pupils a completenuisance and was in two minds about the annual gatherings. This was becauserecently departed pupils came and caused chaos (As I seem to remember theydid in my day � 1960-65). I also went to the 40th anniversary dinner and get-together in 1999. There were indications then that all was not well with The Association,although I didn't realise at the time, I was too busy talking to people Ihadn't seen for 35 years notice! These have become clear to me since.An example is that the after-dinner speaker was nothing to do with Rannoch.He was an ex-GlenAlmond (I think) rugby player and what he said was prettyirrelevant, mainly about what ousiders thought of Rannoch in his day. I nowthink this indicates that the school had largely lost touch with formerpupils. There are many former pupils who would have been a much betterchoice. eg 'Hon John' KacKenzie, now Earl of Cromartie who learned so muchat Rannoch and became an explosives engineer and world-renowned mountaineer - Prime Rannoch output! David Mills whom I know was hugely influenced byRannoch and went on to found a renowned design house. What stands out was a meeting in the chapel of The Rannoch Association.This appeared on the timetable for the weekend but with no advance noticeor agenda published. According to the Constitution all such meetings had tobe notified in advance to all members. This was not done. I went to themeeting which was pretty shambolic. There was no check that those presentwere actually members. Many were not, there were friends and partnerspresent. There was no check for a quorum. This makes me suspect that themembership list had fallen into decay and was not available. The committee were there, and all they said was that they wished toresign. They gave no concrete reason this. The committee having, resigned Colin Mackay took over the meeting andasked if anyone wanted to stand for the committee. Needless to say, withoutforewarning, no-one did. Even if they had, valid voting would probably havebeen impossible anyway as there was no check on those present. I think that occasion marks the end of the Rannoch Association.AFTERWARDS Later in 2001, when the school was floundering. Simon Stoker and Icontacted Mr Carpenter, the last head, with a view to reviving theAssociation. We modified the original constitutionof RSOBSA, mainly to makeit uni-sex by replacing references to Old Boys with Former Pupils. We had hoped that a new committe could have been elected and picked upthe pieces. At first Mr Carpenter was helpful and then quite suddenly went cold andrefused to help further. Why we never found out. Perhaps he realised theyhad no information about members and the task was impossible. It waspossibly politics.FOOTNOTE Once the school had closed and the Receivers had done their work, theremaining documents eventually devolved to the board. This is the boardthat replaced the one in control when the school closed as the result ofand EGM by the School Members. This board later became the trustees of TheRannoch Association Trust, formed to look after anything that remained ofthe school. This was a considerable time after closure, probably 2004/5. Those documents contained virtually nothing about former pupils. All wefound was the list of 1127 members names from 1992. There was no indicationof life/annual membership. There were no other records of the Associationsuch as minutes of meetings or accounts. Later I spoke to various people including John Dunthorne, Alan Hartleyand Colin Mackay who provided another copy of the 1992 list. No-one couldshed more light on things. I see no way that this Association could have been revived. There was nomembership list, no committee and no records. As far as I can see, very sadly, The Rannoch Association has been deadfor many years.